Free Republic

ITHACA, NY-“Why is it just so difficult to make the search for truth the highest journalistic value?” Pulitzer Prize-winning former New York Times Reporter Linda Greenhouse asked a packed Lewis Auditorium yesterday. Greenhouse relied on her wisdom and experience as she spoke about the state of today’s news media, questioning the very rubric by which today’s journalists operate. Adolph S. Ochs, the founder of today’s modern New York Times, laid out his goal for the creation of a newspaper that would “give the news impartially, without fear or favor, regardless of party, sect or interests involved."Veteran mind: Linda Greenhouse, Pulitzer...

Science and skeptical bloggers A small article in last week’s Science magazine frets that skeptical bloggers are teasing climate scientists over their failed predictions. Bloggers are pointing out that actual temperatures have not been friendly to climatologists, and have failed to rise as predicted. Some climate scientists respond by effectively saying: have no fear, warming is on its way—and this time we mean it! Climate forecast failures? Since 1999, most climate model predictions have been too high by a factor of about 3. Plus, actual temperatures have been decreasing, or at least not increasing. Yet the belief in the accuracy...

UK - Householders could be fined £1,000 if they throw food scraps and potato peelings into the dustbin under a Government 'zero waste' policy. They will be forced to sift through their rubbish for anything that can be recycled, reused, rotted or burnt for electricity. The crackdown will create so much recyclable material that homes could be given five wheelie bins and waste boxes to cope. The controversial zero waste policy - part of the Government's drive to cut greenhouse gas emissions - will be unveiled tomorrow by Environment Minister Hilary Benn. The plans are due to be outlined at...

Arctic temperatures are now higher than at any time in the last 2,000 years, research reveals. Changes to the Earth's orbit drove centuries of cooling, but temperatures rose fast in the last 100 years as human greenhouse gas emissions rose. Scientists took evidence from ice cores, tree rings and lake sediments. Writing in the journal Science, they say this confirms that the Arctic is very sensitive both to changes in solar heating and to greenhouse warming. The 23 sites sampled were good enough to provide a decade-by-decade picture of temperatures across the region. The result is a "hockey stick"-like curve...

The purpose of cap and trade (C&T) legislation is to reduce Americans’ consumption of fossil fuels—coal, oil, and natural gas—and to speed up the transition to alternate forms of energy, such as wind and solar power. The “cap” part would be a legislated limit to the quantity of carbon dioxide that Americans would be permitted to put into the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels. The government would then issue permits that it would sell or give (details are being worked out) to businesses who could then either emit CO2 up to the amount stipulated in their permit, or,...

Obama campaigned on it and even managed to talk about it a full week into office, issuing an executive order on January 23, 2009, promising to create "an unprecedented level of openness in Government" and "establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration." As usual with the words that float so effortlessly from politicians, they were just words. Undoubtedly, they will be paraded about from time to time like a USSR military review--whenever it's convenient to do so. One very important place where transparency is being hidden behind closed doors involves the very inconvenient science behind charging the EPA...

COVENTRY, Vt. – Vermont dairy farmers Tim Maikshilo and Kristen Dellert, mindful of shrinking their carbon footprint, have changed their cows' diet to reduce the amount of gas the animals burp — dairy cows' contribution to global warming. Coventry Valley Farm is one of 15 Vermont farms working with Stonyfield Farm Inc., whose yogurt is made with their organic milk, to reduce the cows' intestinal methane by feeding them flaxseed, alfalfa, and grasses high in Omega 3 fatty acids. The gas cows belch is the dairy industry's biggest greenhouse gas contributor, research shows, most of it emitted from the front...

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, in the GOP's weekly radio and Internet address, called the House climate bill "a classic example of unwise government." The address culminated a week of coordinated Republican attacks on the Democratic proposal which would require the first nationwide reductions in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.

U.S. Bill Moves a Step Closer, but a Global Deal on Climate Change Presents a Bigger Challenge for Obama Administration WASHINGTON -- A landmark proposal to curb U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions cleared a key congressional panel, bolstering prospects that the government will put a price on carbon for the first time and portending a major shift in how the U.S. uses energy. At the same time, China's government asserted a new, tougher stance in the face of pressure to cut its emissions, underscoring the challenge that the Obama administration will face in trying to forge a global deal to combat climate...

Some business leaders are cozying up with politicians and scientists to demand swift, drastic action on global warming. This is a new twist on a very old practice: companies using public policy to line their own pockets. ...When the Kyoto Protocol was signed, an internal memo was sent within Enron that stated, "If implemented, [the Kyoto Protocol] will do more to promote Enron's business than almost any other regulatory business."

House Democrats said last night that they would scale back some of the most aggressive provisions of a bill to cut greenhouse gas emissions, a compromise designed to win the votes of fellow Democrats whose states rely on coal or heavy industry. Such a deal would give a crucial boost to a measure that is a key priority for both President Obama and Democrats on Capitol Hill. It had run aground amid concerns that it would cost too much, or weigh too heavily on states in the Midwest and West... The basic structure of the bill remains unchanged: It calls...

As those following the insanity in the Oregon Legislature know, House Bill 2186 A Engrossed is scheduled for a floor debate and vote today. According to the House Clerks Office, and a glance at the floor schedule reveal, it is unlikely that the bill will be heard today. There are a total of 27 House Bills that were carried over from May 6th to today, and those bills will be considered first. The Clerk's office reports that the House Bill Schedule will be cleared tomorrow, meaning that they will hear and vote upon every bill to clear this legislative schedule...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Friday declared that greenhouse gas emissions like carbon dioxide endanger human health and welfare, clearing the way for possible U.S. regulation. The EPA said it found that "greenhouse gases in the atmosphere endanger the public health and welfare of current and future generations" and human activities spur global warming. "These high atmospheric levels are the unambiguous result of human emissions, and are very likely the cause of the observed increase in average temperatures and other climatic changes," the agency said in its finding, released online at epa.gov. Regulation is not automatically...

Link only - 3rd UPDATE: EPA Cleared To Declare Greenhouse Gases A Danger

BERLIN (AFP) – Germany's environment minister warned on Saturday that if Washington does not go beyond its current greenhouse gas cutting commitments, agreement on a new climate pact this year will prove difficult. So far, the Obama administration has agreed to cut heat-trapping greenhouse gasses only to 1990 levels, far short of European Union commitments. "If the United States isn't ready to go further than that, things are going to be very difficult in Copenhagen," minister Sigmar Gabriel told AFP, referring to a key summit to be held in December which will look to draft a new version of the...

EPA proposes greenhouse gas registry – A first step for climate policy On March 10 the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that it will propose a new rule to require greenhouse gas emissions reporting from thousands of businesses nationwide – a prerequisite for any effective climate change program. A greenhouse gas registry is a database for collecting, verifying, and tracking emissions from specific industrial sources. Late in 2007 Congress ordered the Bush EPA to create just such a greenhouse gas emissions reporting rule. Not surprisingly, the Bush administration missed its first deadline for publishing a draft of the rule and...

Banking problems and “toxic assets” are major contributors to the ongoing decline in the stock market, but it is quite likely that investors took them into account last year. The 800 pound gorilla in the living room that nobody seems to want to talk about consists of Barack Obama’s agenda (per his State of the Union Address) to impose taxes on all fossil fuels, or require users of fossil fuels to buy carbon offset credits from the modern counterparts of medieval indulgence peddlers. As long as this agenda continues to menace the United States, investors are rightly reluctant to invest...

President Barack Obama's first budget includes $15 billion a year for renewable energy programs and an ambitious plan to raise $646 billion from a carbon reduction proposal. "Because our future depends on our ability to break free from oil that's controlled by foreign dictators, we need to make clean, renewable energy the profitable kind of energy," Mr. Obama said Thursday morning. "That's why we'll be working with Congress on legislation that places a market-based cap on carbon pollution and drives the production of more renewable energy." The plan uses money from a cap-and-trade program — which would allow companies to...

President Obama will pledge Tuesday night that the nation "will rebuild, we will recover," as he delivers an address to a joint session of Congress and with a nervous nation watching at home. "While our economy may be weakened and our confidence shaken; though we are living through difficult and uncertain times, tonight I want every American to know this: We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before," Mr. Obama will say, according to excerpts of his remarks. In lofty language, Mr. Obama is expected to promise a new path forward...

Barack Hussein Obama will propose a massive business tax on greenhouse gases in his FY 2010 federal budget to be presented this week.The massive tax increase and power grab was buried at the end on article on Obama's forthcoming budget proposal in The New York Times:On energy policy, Mr. Obama’s budget will show new revenues by 2012 from his proposal to require companies to buy permits from the government for greenhouse gas emissions above a certain cap. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the permits would raise up to $300 billion a year by 2020. Since companies would pass their...

The claim that carbon dioxide (CO2) can increase air temperatures by "trapping" infrared radiation (IR) ignores the fact that in 1909 physicist R.W. Wood disproved the popular 19th Century thesis that greenhouses stayed warm by trapping IR. Unfortunately, many people who claim to be scientists are unaware of Wood's experiment which was originally published in the Philosophical magazine , 1909, vol 17, p319-320. Wood was an expert on IR. His accomplishments included inventing both IR and UV (ultraviolet) photography. Wood constructed two identical small greenhouses. The description implies the type of structure a gardener would refer to as a "coldframe"...

Former Vice President Al Gore brought a stark message to the Senate on Wednesday: A new climate change treaty is critical to continuing human life on Earth. The Nobel Peace Prize winner urged the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to push for a U.S.-brokered treaty in December in Copenhagen, Denmark, where the United Nations will host a climate change conference. Only the United States can lead such an effort, he said. “This is the one challenge that could completely end human civilization, and it is rushing at us with such speed and force,” said Gore, who won an Oscar for the...

The key players are now all in place in Washington and in state governments across America to officially label carbon dioxide as a pollutant and enact laws that tax we citizens for our carbon footprints. Only two details stand in the way, the faltering economic times and a dramatic turn toward a colder climate. The last two bitter winters have lead to a rise in public awareness that CO2 is not a pollutant and is not a significant greenhouse gas that is triggering runaway global warming. How did we ever get to this point where bad science is driving big...

Jim Hansen is the 'grandfather of climate change' and one of the world's leading climatologists. In this rare interview in New York, he explains why President Obama's administration is the last chance to avoid flooded cities, species extinction and climate catastropheRobin McKie, science editor The Observer, Sunday 18 January 2009 Article historyAlong one wall of Jim Hansen's wood-panelled office in upper Manhattan, the distinguished climatologist has pinned 10 A4-sized photographs of his three grandchildren: Sophie, Connor and Jake. They are the only personal items on display in an office otherwise dominated by stacks of manila folders, bundles of papers and...

http://ifglobalwarmingisrealthenwhyisitcold.blogspot.com/

NH joins final test of greenhouse gas cap-trade systemBy DAVID BROOKS Telegraph Staff Published: Wednesday, December 17, 2008 If it's true that the country tends to follow New Hampshire's lead – which is the whole idea of our presidential primary, after all – then today's auction of the right to send 1.2 million tons of carbon into the air has extra significance. New Hampshire is participating for the first time in the 10-state Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI, or "reggie"), the hemisphere's first cap-and-trade system designed to curtail the gas that most contributes to global warming. The recession has reduced...

<p>NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Snow is falling in the New Orleans area.</p> <p>The National Weather Service says a mixture of sleet and snow is falling Thursday morning from Baton Rouge east across much of southeastern Louisiana.</p> <p>The winter weather closed some schools and created hazardous driving conditions.</p>

November 26, 2008 Cow Tax? EPA looking into regulating greenhouse gases By Wayne Stewart The Palestine Herald, Texas PALESTINE — An effort to possibly regulate greenhouse gases by the Environmental Protection Agency could have far-reaching effects on the bottom line for local cattle producers. The EPA has issued an “Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking” and in so doing is seeking public comment on a plan to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles under the Clean Air Act, though an EPA spokeswoman said the agency is still in the data collection stage. If the plan goes through, the American Farm Bureau...

Obama wants to reshape the agriculture industryIf he is willing to "bankrupt" the coal industry over global warming, what's he going to do to the agriculture sector which "actually is contributing more greenhouse gases than our transportation sector"? Don't forget about biden's EVIL corn syrup...evil corn syrup

Kimberley Strassel's If the Cap Fits: Why our CEOs are warming to Kyoto shows that the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP or CAP for short) includes many companies that seek corporate welfare in the form of government-mandated purchases of their services or products. Many of USCAP's members do not, in fact, even claim to produce a product or service, and are dependent on donations or grants. The recent performance of USCAP's portfolio also suggests that the Climate Action Partnership is Wall Street's Oscar the Cat: a harbinger of bankruptcy, desperate mergers, and generally poor business performance. ...While several of CAP's...

SALEM, Ore. (Legal Newsline)-The Bush administration has "refused to accept the reality" that greenhouse gas emissions are harming the environment, Oregon Attorney General Hardy Myers told Legal Newsline. Myers said for that reason a group of five states, including Oregon, is suing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under the federal Clean Air Act to force the U.S. government to set emissions standards for planes, ships and off-road vehicles. "I share the view that global warming is a very, very serious threat, and the unmistakable pattern that's emerged under this administration is a refusal by the federal government to recognize that,"...

The Bush administration has "refused to accept the reality" that greenhouse gas emissions are harming the environment, Oregon Attorney General Hardy Myers told Legal Newsline. Myers said for that reason five states, including Oregon, are suing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under the federal Clean Air Act to force the U.S. government to set emissions standards for planes, ships and off-road vehicles.

Are global warming alarmists encouraging children to commit suicide because their carbon footprints supposedly are harming the planet?It certainly appears so in a children's game concocted by the state-funded Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Science Department, available online. 'Pigs' Should Die YoungThe game is called Planet Slayer. Using it, children can calculate their carbon footprint--how much impact their carbon emissions allegedly have on global warming. The purpose for doing so, children were told in a version of the game that was online in early June, is so they can "find out what age you should die at so you don't use more...

The purpose of this paper is to provide a layman’s critique of the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) theory, and in particular to challenge the fairly widespread notion that the science and projected consequences of AGW currently justify massive spending and government intervention into the world’s economies.  This paper will show that despite good evidence that global temperatures are rising and that CO2 can act as a greenhouse gas and help to warm the Earth, we are a long way from attributing all or much of current warming to man-made CO2.  We are even further away from being able to...

I DEVOTED six years to carbon accounting, building models for the Australian Greenhouse Office. I am the rocket scientist who wrote the carbon accounting model (FullCAM) that measures Australia's compliance with the Kyoto Protocol, in the land use change and forestry sector. FullCAM models carbon flows in plants, mulch, debris, soils and agricultural products, using inputs such as climate data, plant physiology and satellite data. I've been following the global warming debate closely for years. When I started that job in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty good: CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the old...

Thousands of Americans are pledging to fire up their charcoal barbecue grills, bask in the infinite glow of numerous incandescent light bulbs, shun recycling of any kind and take spontaneous road trips in gas-guzzling vehicles to increase their personal carbon output – all in protest of the Senate debate over a bill calling for a "cap-and-trade" system. Grassfire, one of the nation's fastest-growing grassroots organizations, has declared June 12 Carbon Belch Day and is enlisting citizens to expel more than 100 million pounds of CO2 to combat climate alarmist propaganda and to take a stand against a "$1.2 trillion carbon...

Climate Bill Underlines Obstacles to Capping Greenhouse GasesBy Juliet Eilperin and Steven Mufson Washington Post Staff Writers Sunday, June 1, 2008; Page A12 When the Senate takes up landmark climate legislation this week, its backers can be sure of just one thing: The obstacles they face show how hard it will be to enact a meaningful cap on greenhouse gases -- probably under the next administration. The next administration, not this one, because even supporters of the complex, extensively negotiated 494-page bill say that there is little chance that it will win Senate approval, less chance that the House will...

AN ABC website has been accused of portraying farmers and forestry workers as evil and telling kids how much carbon they can produce before they die.

"In terms of renewable fuels, ethanol is the worst solution," Patzek says. "It has the highest energy cost with the least benefit."Ethanol is produced by fermenting renewable crops like corn or sugarcane. It may sound green, Patzek says, but that's because many scientists are not looking at the whole picture. According to his research, more fossil energy is used to produce ethanol than the energy contained within it. Patzek's ethanol critique began during a freshman seminar he taught in which he and his students calculated the energy balance of the biofuel. Taking into account the energy required to grow the...

Captain Benjamin Torpy (back), commander of Headquarters and Headquarters Battery, 3rd Battalion, 320th Field Artillery and interpreter Timmy, talk to al-Rasheed Nahia deputy chairman Hussein Obaid Shurada and local farmer Oday Ibrahim Ghathwan al-Ghererri, as Sheikh Qassim Abbas Shereat looks on at the groundbreaking for the Shukrega greenhouse, May 10. U.S. Army photo. CAMP STRIKER — Local government officials gathered for a groundbreaking ceremony for the Shukrega greenhouse in the Mahmudiyah area, about 25 kilometers south of Baghdad, May 10. “The project brings to the area an opportunity to prove how effective the greenhouse can be for farmers,� said Capt....

Al Gore reinvents the medieval racket of selling indulgences (pardons for one's sins, worth hundreds of years of penance in an invisible Purgatory). With due credit to Geoffrey Chaucer for the original: Now, good men, Earth forgive you each trespass, And keep you from the sin of greenhouse gas. My carbon offsets cure and will suffice, So that it gains me gold, or silver brings, Or else, I care not- brooches, spoons or rings. You must embrace fully Al Gore’s line of bull, While o’er your eyes we will pull the wool! An offset certificate I’ll give you, anon, And...

We understand that Barack Obama wants Albert Gore to serve as his environmental advisor. All the carnival barkers, medicine show proprietors, and rainmakers seem to be getting together in the same circus tent, and the price of admission is more than the American people can afford. For reference, a rainmaker was a charlatan who would visit desperate communities during droughts. He would display an impressive array of regalia, which might have included artifacts that he had supposedly obtained from Native American medicine men, and offer to make it rain–for a price. The desperate farmers would give him their money, and...

PARIS (AP) -- Negotiators from the world's biggest emitters of greenhouse gases wrapped up another round of climate talks yesterday by clashing over how deeply to cut the heat-trapping gases they put into the atmosphere. The delegates from 16 nations scheduled more talks next month in trying to produce a new climate accord. Addressing the negotiators, French President Nicolas Sarkozy warned that warming is threatening food supplies and risks sparking a dozen Darfur-like conflicts among displaced, starving people around the world. He said water shortages and rivalry over farmland and fishing resources already are "having a considerable impact on security,"...

Unlike so many of the hapless victims on TVOne's daily Crimewatch (also known as One Network News) I have recently been lucky enough to be in two right places at the right time. In December last year, at the UN conference in Bali, I heard Viscount Monckton present a paper prepared by himself, the Australian Dr David Evans and our own Dr Vincent Gray (who were at Bali, too) that showed while the IPCC models predict that greenhouse gases would produce an extensive "hot spot" in the upper troposphere over the tropics, the satellite measurements show no such hotspots have...

The Australian reports a few inconvenient truths regarding global climate change that have yet to receive much attention from a media sold on global warming. Not only has the Earth cooled since its peak year in 1998, not only are oceans cooler than predicted, but new NASA data shows that the computer models that predicted runaway global warming were based on a fundamental error. Rather than having clouds and water vapor amplifying the warming effect of carbon in the atmosphere, it turns out that they compensate for it (via Memeorandum): Last Monday - on ABC Radio National, of all places...

New derivation of equations governing the greenhouse effect reveals "runaway warming" impossible Miklós Zágoni isn't just a physicist and environmental researcher. He is also a global warming activist and Hungary's most outspoken supporter of the Kyoto Protocol. Or was. That was until he learned the details of a new theory of the greenhouse effect, one that not only gave far more accurate climate predictions here on Earth, but Mars too. The theory was developed by another Hungarian scientist, Ferenc Miskolczi, an atmospheric physicist with 30 years of experience and a former researcher with NASA's Langley Research Center. After studying it,...

New derivation of equations governing the greenhouse effect reveals "runaway warming" impossible Miklós Zágoni isn't just a physicist and environmental researcher. He is also a global warming activist and Hungary's most outspoken supporter of the Kyoto Protocol. Or was. That was until he learned the details of a new theory of the greenhouse effect, one that not only gave far more accurate climate predictions here on Earth, but Mars too. The theory was developed by another Hungarian scientist, Ferenc Miskolczi, an atmospheric physicist with 30 years of experience and a former researcher with NASA's Ames Research Center. After studying it,...

Linda Greenhouse, who has covered the Supreme Court for The New York Times for 30 years, said Wednesday that she has accepted a buyout package from the newspaper. Greenhouse joined the Times in 1968 and started covering the court in 1978, making her career there longer than any of the current justices except John Paul Stevens, who came on in 1975. News of Greenhouse's departure had been reported earlier Wednesday on a legal blog on the Web site for National Review magazine. Greenhouse, 61, said in a phone interview that she had been planning to retire in a few years...

Sandia's synthetic-fuel recipe: Mix CO2 , water; heat with sun R. Colin Johnson (12-19-2007) In the hydrogen economy, automobiles would be powered by the simplest element on the periodic table, leveraging the element's abundance. But as the Hindenburg disaster demonstrated, hydrogen is also the most difficult element to compress into a safe, usable form. Why not instead synthesize a hydrocarbon-based fuel, such as methanol or even gasoline? Sandia National Laboratories is building such a fuel synthesizer in a bid to harness sunlight to reverse the process of combustion. The reactor would use reclaimed carbon dioxide emissions to create renewable synthetic...

Hedge fund billionaire Paul Tudor Jones has partnered with several big Wall Street firms and The New York Mercantile Exchange to form a new electronic venue for trading carbon greenhouse gases and other emissions, The Post has learned. According to people familiar with the deal, the new venture, to be called The Green Exchange, will compete with the Chicago Climate Exchange, which was established last year for carbon trading. In addition to Jones' firm, Tudor Investment Corp., and the Nymex, the new exchange is backed by Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, JPMorgan and Merrill Lynch. Evolution Markets, a leading broker in...